By Allan Lake
Few are drawn to an island between
mainland Australia and Antarctica
on debased but still habitable planet.
Lack of apartment towers and gridlocked
freeways – rush hour there is anaemic –
but untroubled birds abound on its hundreds
of smaller islands. If sea was warm,
there would be a flood, not trickle of upgrade
primates [Consult Encyclopedia]
buying plots of earth, reclining on beaches,
injecting ice cream, keeping hydrated
instead of rugging up, clutching thermoses.
Consider Balimania or Hawaii, how islands
sink under the weight of good fortune.
Admit you went there. Wince.
But there’s still Tasmania. Quite still,
some would say stalled for generations.
Others are less kind. Growth mostly unseen
in dank forests. Temperate Tasmania has a cold,
dangerous moat, frosts, snowy mountains,
hosts of restive ghosts. Summer does unfold,
eventually, between seasons less mild.
Remaining devils and leatherwood honey
are strangely sweet but it is what’s not there
in the often overlooked netherworld
that draws the odd straggler from
the seemingly decided human race
to clutter space, to elsewhere.
[Consult World News]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Allan Lake is a poet from Allover, Canada who now lives in Allover, Australia. Some coincidence. His latest chapbook of poems, “My Photos of Sicily, was published by Ginninderra Press (Aus) in 2020. It contains no photos, only poems.
The Green Shoe Sanctuary 